


The Madness of Staying Alive

by justalittlegreen



Series: Sunshine and Filth [18]
Category: MASH (1970), MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love, Reconciliation, Smut, hunnihawk, reconnecting, the rock of peg and bj, the roots of something more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 08:51:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16636775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalittlegreen/pseuds/justalittlegreen
Summary: she went through this, too. And he wasn't there to hold her through it.





	The Madness of Staying Alive

**Author's Note:**

> set immediately after "moment of truth"

_Mill Valley, 1954_

 

BJ drops the letter and puts his head in his hands. Peg waits. She's said her piece. Whatever comes now is what he needs to think and feel and say. She turns in the chair until she's facing him, hands itching to smooth his hair and scratch the spot on the back of his neck the way he likes.   
  
But she went through this, too. And he wasn't there to hold her through it. And she's giving him a whole lot less time than she had. So there's no dulling it, no cushioning it.   
  
BJ takes a long shuddery breath and lets out a sigh that turns into a long, high moan. It's eerie and chilling and more pained than the way he screams in his sleep. She doesn't even recognize that he's crying until his shoulders start to shake. When he does start to speak, his voice is so small. Small and scared. She can't make out the words, has to ask him to speak up.  
  
"tell me - "  
  
"yes, darling, what do you want me to - "  
  
"tell me  _everything."_  
  
"everything?"  
  
"How long have you known? What do you know? How - how could you have known and still - " his voice breaks off again and he bangs his head against the table. "I can't even look at you, Peggy. I don't know how you can look at _me."_

Peg ticks the answers off on her fingers. "I've known since he wrote to me. You were six months in. Right before the bug-out. Over the months, I figured out that you -" her voice hitches. It's not raw, not like it was, the word still aches like a bruise - "loved each other. In...many ways. He never wrote me again, but I could piece together bits from your letters. It was obvious that you loved him. It was obvious that he kept you alive and whole over there. And I couldn't - no matter how angry and confused and hurt I was - I couldn't take that away from you. I came to feel like you were Alice down the well, in a world where nothing made sense. Well, no sense to me, anyway. It was the only way I began to understand how you could have done it."  
  
She can hear the reluctant smile in his voice. "We were certainly all a bit mad there," he says.  
  
"I know. And I could excuse it as madness. I needed to - it was the only way I could keep writing to you, keep talking to you. It was the only way I could explain it. That you -  _my_ you - was somewhere still inside there and would come home to me. But you had to stay alive, and Hawkeye was the way."  
  
"But I did hurt you," he says, choking on the guilt.  
  
Now she does reach over and put a hand on his back.   
  
"Yes."  
  
"Peggy - Peggy Jane - I'm sorry doesn't even begin - I can't believe I was so  _selfish._ "   
  
"A year ago, I'd have agreed with you," she says quietly. "But a year changes a lot."  
  
He finally looks up at here. His eyes are red, and he looks so broken, and so lost. "I made a promise," he says tightly. "I made a  _vow_ \- and I broke it. I  _broke_ it. I don't know if I can live with having done that to you."  
  
She fixes him with the kindest, most insistent stare she can muster. "You _promised,"_ she says, "to come home to us. You promised to stay alive. You vowed to love me and cherish me and honor me. And a year ago, I'm not sure I'd have believed that you kept it. But now, I know that you have. Did you ever stop?"  
  
" _No!"_ he yells, eyes going wide and wild. The shout startles both of them, like he hadn't expected it to come out that way. "I  _never_ stopped loving you. I  _never_ stopped cherishing you. You were in my heart the entire time and you kept me as alive and whole as -"  
  
"As Hawkeye?"  
  
The sound of his name in her mouth brings the tears again, and this time, Peg knows it's okay. She folds BJ into her arms and murmurs, "let's go to the couch, okay?" The mechanics of holding him really don't work in chairs.  
  
  
  
Two hours later, they're still on the couch, BJ lying with his head in her lap. They've gone over the story again and again. She's learned some things - how their friends never officially knew, but seemed to tacitly approve and not ask questions. How Hawkeye always encouraged BJ to stay close with her - "honestly, Peg, I'm sure he was jealous at times. He had to be - not just of the two of us, but all of us. His hunger for family is what held us all together when we got frustrated and angry and full of despair about the war. We held it together for him - we  _were_ his family."  
  
She tells him how hearing him talk to Erin tethered her, kept her from packing up the house and running. How she never felt she lost that part of him. "I'm so glad Erin was born before you left. Even though it was impossible at times. Even though there were nights when I thought I'd go out of mind, nights when I screamed at the baby to just stop crying - she gave me an unshakable part of you, a part that I knew, even in my worst moments, that Hawkeye could never take from me."  
  
"He didn't. He didn't take anything from you. I wish you could know that the way I know that."  
  
"I think that's why I agreed to have him out here. To see. To know for certain. For all I know, he could come swinging in the back door and shake your hand I'd take off like a shot. Or - or he might come in and - do something else. And it might not be so bad. I really don't know."  
  
"Peg, if you're not ready - I don't want to risk - he isn't worth hurting you. He's not."  
  
Peg looks down again, places her finger at the base of BJ's throat. She pushes just a tiny bit, until his eyes fly open and he coughs - "Peg, that's my - I can't -  _hey"_ He grabs her wrist lifts her off him.

" _He. is. worth. it._   _You_ decided that. You _did_ hurt me. You decided he was worth it, and you nearly lost me for it, for a moment. Or several. Don't you ever tell me that he isn't worth it to you. You chose him over me once."  
  
BJ closes his eyes again and says through gritted teeth, "I never chose him over you. I chose him with you. Having him never meant giving you up. The army took me from you. Not him. If anything, he helped me feel close to you from over there. He kept me from losing myself completely to Wonderland. He reminded me who I was, who I really was, out of the war."

Peg makes a small "mmm," and they stay quiet for some time. The shadows grow long, and dark begins to settle over the house. Neither of them mentions dinner. Erin is already off to the grandparents for the weekend.   
  
She thinks BJ may have fallen asleep - she can hardly make his features out.   
  
"Darling?"  
  
His voice is tired, but awake. "I'm here."  
  
She shifts and he sits up. She pulls him close and reaches for his lips. The kiss is strong, full of pain and yearning and - somehow - gentleness. They take their time, necking for a long time on the couch, still in their clothes. He kisses and licks his way down, making her squirm deliciously, sucking the skin of her neck between his teeth and tonguing it through the bite. The thought flashes -  _he must have learned that from Hawkeye_ \- but it feels so good that any misgivings about it are promptly dismissed.   
  
He lets her make all the first moves, just as he did when they were young, and shy, and full of unsaid want and nerves. It feels both odd and right that she would hesitate to unbuckle his pants, to unbutton her shirt, to invite him into all the places he's been before - and since he got home, besides - but she does. They are slow and exquisite, and when his mouth finds her nipple, she arches and cries out, louder than she usually is with him, and she can feel him stirring, instantly hard at the sound.  _So he likes that,_ she thinks with some satisfaction, a Cheshire grin.  
  
She experiments with sound as she invites him over more and more of her skin - soft whispers, gasps of  _oh yes, right there, yes_ , and when his fingers find her soaked through the cotton, she groans, deep and guttural, the kind of sound she's never heard come out of her own throat. His fingers stroke and tease and the pace starts to build with her impatience, and she's stripping out of her clothes, fumbling for his open belt and whispering hoarsely into his ear,  
  
"I want you. I want you to take me like this. Now. Show me I'm yours."  
  
His reply is a strangled moan as he struggles for a minute with the inconveniences of pants and shorts and remembering to take off his belt (she hates the feel of a buckle against her skin) but when he takes her, it is slow, and full, and she can feel herself stretching around him, legs wrapped around his waist as he kisses her slowly.  
  
"No," he answers, voice merely more than a breath at her ear. "I'm  _yours_ , Peggy Jane Hayden Hunnicutt. I was always yours."  
  


_And his_ , she thinks. But she doesn't let the words come out. She's not ready to find Hawkeye Pierce in her bed in any form. But BJ's steady solidity keeps her from getting too distracted, and soon, he's leaning back and pulling her with him so that she can ride him the way she likes best, where she can stroke herself while he watches - how he loves to watch her - and keep himself on the edge until she falls forward, letting out all the wail she never knew was in her, and he's coming apart too, his arms locked around her while he thrusts and groans something that sounds vaguely like her name.  
  
  
They cry, too, in the dark. After she slips away to grab a kitchen towel, steals to the bathroom to clean herself up, she comes back to the living room, and he is curled up again, fetal and hurting. But he lets her lead him to bed, where there is room for her to curl up, too. There are more kisses and more tears, but no more words until she falls asleep, face buried in the curls of his chest.


End file.
